Today Is...May Day

May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice and usually involves gathering wildflowers and green branches, weaving floral garlands, crowning a May Queen and setting up a Maypole, May Tree or May Bush, around which people dance and that's where it all gets a bit weird.
As with most festivals, May Day began life as a Roman festival, this one to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and Dionysus and Aphrodite although as with Roman festivals, it was less about gathering wildflowers and weaving garlands and more about deflowering the local females, the festival was known as Orgies which doesn't really much more explanation, it says exactly what it is on the tin, or up against the side of the house or floor of the shed..you get the general idea.  
As many Roman festivals such as Christmas and Easter got sneakily assumed by the Religious types, they also tried the same trick with May Day and tried to make it about the Virgin Mary or Jesus's stepdad Joseph but as it didn't involve alcohol or presents, the idea kinda fell by the wayside although considering what us English do on May Day, the Catholics may have dodged a bullet, a jingly Morris Dancing Bullet.
I once took a foreign friend to a traditional village May Day celebration and she watched grown men with face paint and bells on their legs, holding ribbons in one hand and waving handkerchiefs in the other all while skipping around a pole, after watching in silence for a few minutes, and after reassuring her that they were doing it voluntarily and nobody was holding their family at gun point, her only utterance was 'Your all feckin' mad' and yes i guess we are but at least we are not having to wash the sticky shed floor with a mop and bucket the next day anymore which is something.